On the one hand, defending the borders of Fodlan from Sreng incursions is pretty important, I'm sure...although I admit that I don't know much about Sreng, what with it being so far removed from the Alliance. [He smiles faintly, resting his chin on one hand, the other on his knee beneath the covers of his bed. (Because he is, in fact, just sitting up in bed. It's too late to be late anymore, while still too early to be early; he, like Felix, was sleeping before this.)] I like learning about everything, as I'm sure you know, but obviously things that are immediately relevant to me take precedence...and Sreng was never particularly relevant to me, all the way up north.

That said...even knowing as little of Sreng as I do, I can see how ridiculous it is to ask a teenager trying to attend school to go fight off a border incursion on his own. What on earth was Margrave Gautier thinking? Some kind of macho rite of inheritance? [If so, Claude's own father and Sylvain's might get along.]

As for what might be outside my control... [Claude shrugs and smiles.] Well, without getting too deep into it, Fodlan doesn't have particularly friendly relations with any country around it, does it? Dagda, Brigid, Almyra, Sreng...let's just say that having a mother from Fodlan never won me a single popularity contest back home and leave it at that.